I’m not wanting to be a downer on your Friday morning, but as business owners, we have to do hard, crappy things sometimes. Occasionally, we find that someone is not the right fit for our gyms. Maybe they’ve got the right skills, but they don’t have the right character. Maybe they’re a great coach, but they aren’t a good employee (yes, that can happen!) When you finally decide it’s time to let someone go, here are a few things to remember.

  1. Make sure you’ve done everything in your power to make it work. Unless the person has had a clear violation of your systems or broken the law (stealing is never OK and should be immediately terminated), you should be in regular communication with employees and make corrections to behavior early on. If they’re spoken to athletes or parents in a tone that doesn’t fit your culture, or they’re not well-liked as a coach – I hope you’ve spent some serious time mentoring this person. Each person you hire deserves your time and attention. Your #1 job as an owner isn’t to coach teams to win Summit and Worlds. Your job is first and foremost to keep kids safe. That means mentally, emotionally and physically. If you have a staff member who has been mentored but is not working well with children, you may have to consider termination. 
  2. Make sure you have systems in place. It’s not fair to our staff to expect things that aren’t clearly defined. In fact, if you have systems, and your staff isn’t following them – do you know whose fault that is? I have bad news. It’s your’s. Maybe you need to revise the system. Maybe you need to train and explain to your staff WHY you have the system in place. Maybe you need to have a better accountability system for ensuring they follow the system as created. Most likely, you’re letting things slide too often in an effort to not come across as micromanaging. If you let it slide enough, people will forget they’re even doing something wrong. What’s not corrected becomes correct actions.

So, if you’re doing all those things and it’s still not working out OR you have staff who are detrimental to your athletes or gym culture, you may need to cut your ties. If that’s you, then I encourage you to check out the podcast Next Gen’s Dan Cotton did a few weeks ago on terminating employees. 

I hope you have a fantastic culture right now and this isn’t the case at all. I can honestly say, that’s where my gym is at currently. That said, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t file this email away in case you ever need it in the future (or listen to that podcast now so you’re prepared in case you ever need to take action.)